A slow day on the job for a System Administrator

Some people would say that when a System Administrator is having a slow day, it means they are doing a good job, since system administration means keeping systems up and running. If users aren't running into your office and bitching, then you're doing your job, right?

I don't know.

Sometimes when I'm sitting here noding or reading Slashdot, I feel useless! I tend to look for something to do, like write up a script to do some inane task or check if there are security updates for the operating systems I help support. I sometimes wish more would happen, but "stuff happening" in a system admin job usually means "getting a crashed server back up". Of course, the fact that the server crashed or the network went down is noticed much more readily than the time you spent in getting it back up.

Of course, half of a sysadmins job is to simply be there so that when something does go wrong, it can be fixed as quickly as possible. Keeping that thought in mind helps slow days go by faster, and with a greater sense of being useful.